Articles in English related to this theme:

Environmental Governance and Managing the Earth

Could the COP 21 be our next Westphalian Moment? ¤ Arnaud Blin ¤ 5 December 2015As the COP 21 is in full throttle, let me reflect briefly on a unique historical event that in some ways resembled the predicament we find ourselves in today. One might call it the “Westphalian Moment.”
To disparage any misunderstanding, let me first make a distinction between this and what has been known as the Westphalian Order, whose revival I am not advocating in the least sense. The Westphalian Order that came about at the end of the Thirty Year War in 1648 and died a century ago in (...) read more

3rd Dialogue Meeting between civil societies from China, Europe and South America ¤ 25 February 2015WE, CITIZENS OF CHINA, SOUTH AMERICA AND EUROPE,
Gathering on the occasion of our “Third Dialogue Meeting between the civil societies of China, Europe and South America” in the framework of the Peoples Summit, taking place in conjunction with the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP20) held in Lima, Peru, in December 2014,
As citizens of the world, we leave this footprint on the path of our collective reflection and commitment, and we raise our voices to speak to the conscience of humankind: (...) read more

Call to Multiply the Village of Alternatives ¤ Alternatiba ¤ 25 February 2014As Stéphane Hessel said, one of the greatest challenges of our time was “climate change and environmental degradation due to the actions of man throughout the last three centuries. The disruption of the climate is worsening faster than ever, and threatening the poorest populations of the planet and conditions for civilized life on Earth.”
All the warning signs are here. Climate disruptions are multiplying, affecting the poorest populations of the global South, but also in the global North: (...) read more

Dialog of Chinese, European, and South American Civil Societies at Rio+20 ¤ 19 January 2013"Impossible ideas are fundamental to have and to dream about, but more importantly, to make them possible."
Civil societies from different parts of the world have been conversing and sharing ideas for more than 20 years. The purpose of these dialogs has been to contribute to the building of a global community, outside of governmental relations. The video here reflects exchanges among Chinese, South American, and European civil-society members. It is about how each society is facing its own (...) read more

The Commons and World Governance ¤ Arnaud Blin,
Gustavo Marin ¤ 2 August 2012It is only by moving from the idea of individual protection to the idea of protection of all that we can start to envisage the possibility of a global social contract. In other words, it is our global freedom, that is, our freedom to enjoy, thus to protect, what is common to all of us as a world community that will entice us to, and determine our will to extract ourselves from what is essentially becoming a global war on our planet, on our “commons,” and on ourselves.
But what does this (...) read more

Rio+20: Failed Diplomacy, Feeble Democracy ¤ Pierre Calame ¤ 18 July 2012The Rio de Janeiro experience has left us with a planet-sized headache. It brought together tens of thousands of people and almost a hundred heads of state to adopt a 50-page, take-it-or-leave-it declaration that repeats commitments made long ago and not kept, taking care to include all the buzz words of a liturgy now emptied of all meaning: the role of women and civil society, rights, the importance of democracy and popular participation, not to mention indigenous people, some of whom were (...) read more

A new historical moment? ¤ Nicola Bullard ¤ 10 March 2012We are facing a cynical response from the elites concerning the ecological and economic crises. What is being sold to us as green economy is nothing but an attempt to have a new round of expansion of capitalism. It is an extension of neoliberalism, a new green Washington consensus, attempting not only to commodify the life in itself, but also to monetize it. It is said that the financial markets and the new technology will solve all our problems.
The Rio+20 agenda has nothing to do with (...) read more

Rio+20 and Beyond. No Future without Justice ¤ Civil Society Reflection Group on Global Development ¤ 22 January 2012Over the last 20 years, little has been done to change patterns of production and consumption that pollute, erode biodiversity and lead to climate change, while commitments to human rights and gender justice have not been fulfilled. We are facing societal and ecological disaster. The State can respond quickly to this, if based on democratic legitimacy and accountability. In times of growing global interrelationship between societies, economies and people, universally agreed principles are (...) read more

"Biocivilization" for the Sustainability of Life and of the Planet. Video on the Workshop ¤ FnWG Team,
iBase,
Traversées ¤ 24 August 2011Rio de Janeiro, August 10-12, 2011
A short video of the seminar
The purpose of this meeting was to add our bit to the construction of a citizens’ movement facing the challenge of Rio+20. Participants were asked to work on a citizen agenda, which will be different from the official agenda. This agenda starts with a fundamental question:
What ethical, political, and philosophical "biocivilization" basics are needed for the sustainability of life and of the planet?
Participants were divided (...) read more

Proposals for a New World Governance ¤ FnWG Team ¤ 16 July 2011Working Paper for the International Workshop
Biocivilization for the
Sustainability of Life
and the Planet
in the run-up to the Rio+20 Conference
Rio de Janeiro, 9 to 12 August 2011
Which architecture of power is needed,
from the local to global level?
How should we organize? How can we organize in a fair and sustainable manner? How can we govern effectively? These deceptively simple questions have been troubling philosophers, jurists and theologians since the dawn of time. These (...) read more

Biocivilization for the Sustainability of Life and of the Planet - Workshop ¤ iBase ¤ 16 July 2011IBASE International Workshop toward the Rio+20 Conference
Rio de Janeiro, August 9-12, 2011
With the support of the Forum for a New World Governance
Read also:
Proposals for a New World Governance
Recovering and Valuing Other Ethical Pillars. Buen Vivir
JUSTIFICATION
As part of the month of public activities to commemorate its 30th anniversary, IBASE will hold a workshop with national and international invitees on August 9-12. Since 1997, after the death of Betinho, one of IBASE’s (...) read more

On the Road to Rio+20 - Proposals for a Citizen Project ¤ Arnaud Blin,
Gustavo Marin ¤ 3 January 2011The upcoming UN Summit on Sustainable Development is to be held in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, 20 years after the historic summit of 1992. According to its organizers, the summit’s objectives are: to secure renewed political commitment to sustainable development; to assess progress towards internationally agreed goals on sustainable development and to address new and emerging challenges. The Summit will also focus on two specific themes: a green economy in the context of poverty eradication and (...) read more

The Challenge of Environmental Governance ¤ Germà Pelayo ¤ 3 December 2009The United Nations Climate Summit (Copenhagen, December 7-18, 2009) is our last chance to obtain an indispensable agreement to renew and deepen the Kyoto Protocol, which runs to 2012 and has turned out to be insufficient to deal with the disastrous evolution of climate change, with environmental deterioration now worse, in some cases, than the most ominous forecasts.
In the lead-up the summit, the heads of the main industrial powers, including for the first time China, have entered into a (...) read more

What Amazonia Does the World Need? ¤ FnWG Team,
iBase ¤ 29 December 2008Amazonia concentrates the essential contradictions of our era: our planet’s lung is being devastated by rampant deforestation, predatory mining, and chaotic urbanization. Its peoples may have been able to preserve the potential of their surrounding biodiversity, but Amazonia suffers from “bad” governance: it is deprived of a collective and rational management of its resources. Worse, it is an arena of recurrent Human Rights violations, with as primary victims its poorest, most humble (...) read more

Environmental Governance and Managing the Earth ¤ Germà Pelayo ¤ 24 September 2008This file contains a series of discussions and proposals formulated in recent years around the environmental dimension of world governance. They have been categorized according to the following themes: reconstruction of the environmental balance; energy management, mineral and ocean resources; farming, food security, and sovereignty; sustainable development; and the relationship between humankind and the biosphere.
The crisis brought about by the accelerated pace and the probable (...) read more

Global Environmental Governance: Elements of a Reform Agenda ¤ Adil Najam,
Mihaela Papa,
Nadaa Taiyab ¤ 14 May 2007"Elements for a Reform Agenda" is the third and last chapter of the e-book "Global Environmental Governance: A Reform Agenda," published in 2006 by the International Institute on Sustainable Development. In this chapter, the authors suggest that there seems to be a consensus around five main goals in relation to global environmental governance (GEG): (1) leadership by outstanding and competent institutions commanding the respect and support of high-profile world leaders; (2) knowledge, (...) read more

Earth System Governance - The Challenge for Social Science ¤ Frank Biermann ¤ 19 July 2006This paper introduces the concept of earth system governance as a new social phenomenon, as a political program, and as a subject of research. It then sketches the key problem structures that complicate earth system governance and derives principles for earth system governance both as a political project and as research practice, namely credibility, stability, adaptiveness, and inclusiveness. The main part of the paper introduces five challenges that lie at the core of earth system (...) read more

Greenhouse-gas Emissions and Global Mitigation Efforts ¤ World Team E. Youth Innovation Competition on Global Governance ¤ 12 July 2007Climate change is a significant global challenge and has been linked directly to excessive greenhouse emissions. The effect is gradual changes in temperature, precipitation, and a rise in sea levels resulting in changes in the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme events. Climate change will impact different regions based on their sensitivity and adaptive capacity and therefore their vulnerability. Many efforts for facing the climate change are being made through government (...) read more

Conference for Climate Change ¤ Youth Innovation Competition on Global Governance ¤ July 2007Our global cooperative system to control greenhouse-gas emissions is a system in the shape of an international agreement in several points. The objectives of this proposal consist essentially of two parts. First, searching for alternative ways of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions that are mostly from energy-related sources, and second, a method for monitoring the conduct of each country.
The authors of this paper seek to find a solution to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions without seriously (...) read more

Citizens’ Reappropriation of Politics

Letter to our readers and to the Mandela World Liberation Front ¤ FnWG Team ¤ 27 January 2014Dear Friends of the FnWG,
Much to our surprise, just as we were devoting our newsletter to the inspiring figure of Nelson Mandela (see “Rediscovering Nelson Mandela for the Twenty-first Century”), the Mandela World Liberation Front, unknown to us, asked us to publish their “MWLF: Statement No. 1” and to put it to discussion on our Forum.
We liked the text for its vitality, for its ethical positioning, for its announced intention to be part of a broad movement of debate and action, and above (...) read more

Statement No. 1 ¤ Mandela World Liberation Front (MWLF) ¤ 27 January 2014Translations: Français, Español, 中文
Read also: Position of the FnWG Team
Qunu, in the night of December 15 to 16, 2013 Mandela is dead! Long live Mandela!
Death did not surprise him; he knew that his cry for peace and justice had been heard.
Death will not stop him because other hands and other faces have always taken up his weapons and his words.
Mandela embodied our struggle; he will continue to embody it! Dead or alive!
We are the world. We are the people
We are a people. We are (...) read more

Rediscovering Nelson Mandela for the Twenty-first Century ¤ Germà Pelayo ¤ 8 January 2014Nelson Mandela’s passing has triggered, in the past few weeks, tributes to the man and reflections on his action. The man’s outstanding character made of his action much more than just a struggle for a people’s emancipation. How can we build a fair and free society in the twenty-first century based on the teachings offered by Mandela in the twentieth century? What geographic scope, what objectives, what strategies and actions would we draw up and what obstacles would we find along the way? (...) read more

For a Democratic Cosmopolitarian Movement ¤ Jean Rossiaud ¤ 14 March 2013The world ecological crisis and the inability of the international system of states to respond to it demonstrate that the human condition is now universal; more so than ever before. It is driving humanity (“the human race” or “humankind”) to think of itself today as a world community, to form itself into a world society and, like a world nation, to defend its survival and its future collectively.
Humanity is however struggling to see itself as a world community. Consciousness of sharing a (...) read more

Document Database

Dictionary of World Power ¤ FnWG Team ¤ 27 September 2013Since the end of the last century, the world has been facing a set of challenges that the existing institutions are unable to address and solve. This is a fact that has been confirmed over the last thirty years through a succession of all kinds of crises. Citizens have found that the beautiful ideal of freedom preached by free-market sycophants is just a facade set up to conceal the altar of greed. The Forum for a new World Governance explores these changes in this extensive work, only (...) read more

The Global Marshall Plan ¤ Network of Spiritual Progressives ¤ 31 May 2013The Global Marshall Plan is a plan for all the world’s people to work in solidarity to eliminate poverty once and for all and to heal the environmental crisis.
The Global Marshall Plan takes its name from the post-World War II Marshall Plan, a massive and successful project to provide aid to Western European countries—including Germany, which had been our antagonist in the war. Historians have debated how altruistic the plan was. Some argue that a large part of the motivation for the (...) read more

After Rio+20: What New World Governance Does the World Need? ¤ Gustavo Marin ¤ 16 August 2012There has already been a good deal of post-Rio+20 articles. A large majority of them have expressed discontentment, disappointment, the evidence of failure foretold, the inadequacy of the governments’ final declaration, etc. Some of these articles, digging deeper, have not stopped at establishing that the governments were not able to reach an agreement equal to the challenges of the major global problems and have gone on to mention that the Conference of the United Nations exposed a crisis (...) read more

Rio + ??? ¤ Cândido Grzybowski ¤ 3 July 2012Where have we got to at the end of the day? Where are we going? What vision do we have of the destiny we share so closely with nature? In what way can we create the conditions to ensure that all human beings, whoever they are, can live well and find happiness while caring for and sharing the generous planet that is our home? What changes do we need to make to the way we currently organize ourselves, produce and consume, a system that produces a shameful level of exclusion and social (...) read more

Proposal Papers for the Rio+20 Peoples Summit ¤ 20 March 2012The FnWG has been working with numerous stakeholders to develop proposals for the Peoples Summit in Rio+20 since late 2010. This has resulted in a set of four Proposal Papers that contribute to understanding the complexity of the debates that are at stake. The idea is to help to structure the debates around the four themes covered by each of the papers:
* ETHICS: Ethical and Philosophical Foundations for Biocivilization
The crisis that we are immersed in at the beginning of the (...) read more

Another Future Is Possible ¤ Dialogue Platform of the Thematic Social Forum ¤ 11 March 2012Rio+20 will be a strong political moment and a unique opportunity to “reinvent the world” by pointing to alternatives to the dangerous path in which we are currently ensnared. Nevertheless, judging from the actions of the hegemonic actors of the international system and from the mediocrity of international agreements negotiated in previous years, their false solutions, and the non-application of the principle already agreed upon at Rio 92, we understand that although we should not give up on (...) read more

Proposal for a Charter of Universal Responsibilities ¤ 28 December 2011Preamble We, Representatives of the Member States of the United Nations, gathered in Rio de Janeiro for the Earth Summit, June 2012
Recognizing
1- that the scope and irreversibility of the interdependences that have been generated among human beings, among societies, and between humankind and the biosphere constitute a radically new situation in the history of humankind, changing it irrevocably into a community of destiny;
2- that indefinite pursuit of current lifestyles and (...) read more

Preparing Rio+20 at the Thematic Social Forum: A Historical Opportunity ¤ Gustavo Marin ¤ 23 December 2011World Social forums, the first of which was held in January 2001 in Porto Alegre, constitute an international forum where organizations, networks, and civil-society movements meet periodically for mutual reinforcement and cross-fertilization. After 2001, every year until 2005 and every other year after that, World Social Forums have continued to assemble the different actors of global civil society. There are other alliances and networks, of course, that have organized international events, (...) read more

WGI: World Governance Index (2009 Report) ¤ Renaud François ¤ 21 May 2009You can see here the 2011 Report:
* The main article (English) (Français) (Español) (中文)
* The WGI document (English) (Français)
* The WGI Map (English) (Français) (Español) (中文)
Developing a new world governance constitutes one of the major challenges of our times, perhaps the most important of all. With this in view, the Forum for a new World Governance launched a number of research projects intended to draw up a roadmap and a set a framework for our work. World governance, though touching (...) read more

Political and Institutional Governance

Civil Society Politics Manifesto ¤ Civil Society Politics ¤ 20 September 2013Around the world politics is in disrepute. It has become detached from society, unresponsive to its needs. It seems incapable of solving the big economic, social and environmental challenges of our time. Public leadership remains important, but politics is everywhere discredited.
In Western societies, politics no longer inspires, cynicism rules, and citizens feel powerless.
In post-communist societies, initial enthusiasm for democracy has given way to detachment and cynicism. Citizens (...) read more

Legal Principles of a New World Governance

Universal Declaration of Emerging Human Rights ¤ 3 October 2012The Universal Declaration of Emerging Human Rights (UDEHR) is a programmatic instrument of international civil society aimed at state actors and other institutional forums for the crystallization of human rights in the new millennium. The Declaration’s point of departure is the idea that civil society plays a fundamental role in facing the social, political, and technological challenges that contemporary global society presents. For this reason it is provided with the UDEHR, an additional (...) read more

The Emergence of Global Administrative Law ¤ Benedict Kingsbury,
Nico Krisch,
Richard B. Stewart ¤ 20 October 2010Emerging patterns of global governance are being shaped by a little-noticed but important and growing body of global administrative law. In this article we begin the task of identifying some patterns of commonality and connection sufficiently deep and farreaching as to constitute an embryonic field of global administrative law. We point to some factors encouraging the development of common approaches, and to mechanisms of learning, borrowing, and cross-referencing, that are contributing to (...) read more

Managing Sea, Soil, and Energy Resources

Governance for Sustainability ¤ Klaus Bosselmann,
Prue Taylor,
Ron Engel ¤ 16 January 2012Relating the concept of governance to the concept of sustainability requires no less than reformulating the basics of democracy. It is clear that the past 20 years of neo-liberal economic globalization have eroded both the common good and democracy. Reclaiming lost ground, therefore, is paramount for disempowered communities and disenfranchised citizens. But this in itself will not be enough. The real issue is whether the common good, that is the sustainability of life, can be pursued (...) read more

World Governance Index

The Five WGI Indicators ¤ FnWG Team,
Renaud François ¤ 27 December 2011Peace and Security indicator
The Peace and Security indicator is broken down into two sub-indicators: the National Security sub-indicator and the Public Security sub-indicator. The National Security sub-indicator comprises: Conflicts, Refugees and Asylum Seekers, and Displaced Persons. The Public Security sub-indicator comprises: Political Climate, Degree of Trust among Citizens, Violent Crime, and Homicides per 100,000 Inhabitants.
Rule of Law indicator
Rule of law, as it is studied (...) read more

The World Governance Index (WGI) ¤ FnWG Team,
Renaud François ¤ 23 December 2011The Forum for a new World Governance (FnWG) launched the World Governance Index - WGI project in 2008. The idea was to develop a “tool” that would allow the players in charge of governance to be aware of the emerging issues and
problems, and to help them to find the necessary solutions.
The paper “Rethinking Global Governance” defines the general objectives of
this effort—to reduce inequalities, establish sustainable development, and build
peace in a world of diversity—and frames some (...) read more

Map of the WGI ¤ Renaud François ¤ 23 December 2011To get detailed results, click on the countries or select the desired name of the country or territory in the drop-down menu on the right. You can zoom in if necessary.
The WGI has been published for 2011 and 2008. You can select the publication year of the index in the drop-down menu on the left.
When you click on a country, you also get the country graph under the map. read more

Seven Leverage Points for the Passage from Economy to Œconomy ¤ Pierre Calame ¤ 13 May 2011The concept of leverage points is very well adapted for a coalition wanting to act in favor of the great transition. We need to identify some concrete issues which we think should have a strong leverage effect as it would imply changes in the whole system.
And looking at what is the systemic change about, it would not be a surprise that these leverage points relate either to concepts or to actors or to the very tools which are used in present economy. Here are seven proposed leverage (...) read more

Types of Goods and Producers

The Future of the Commons ¤ David Bollier ¤ 16 December 2011Twenty-one thinkers and activists from around the world gathered at Crottorf Castle near Cologne, Germany, on June 25-27, 2009, to discuss their shared interest in the commons as a new paradigm of politics, economics and culture. It was a meeting without an explicit agenda, yet one that yielded extraordinarily rich results: a clearer sense of how a new discourse of the commons might be developed; how it could be used to confront the savage pathologies of neoliberalism; and how it could (...) read more

Beyond the Growth Paradigm: Creating a Unified Progressive Politics ¤ Great Transition Initiative,
James Gustave Speth ¤ 8 May 2011The US political economy is failing across a broad Front. – environmental, social, economical, and political. Deep, systemic change is needed to transition to a new economy, one where the acknowledged priority is to sustain human and natural communities. Policies are available to effect this transformation and to temper economic growth and consumerism while simultaneously improving social well-being and quality of life, but a new politics involving a coalescence of progressive communities is (...) read more

What Brazil and What Amazonia Does the World Need? ¤ Cândido Grzybowski ¤ 21 May 2008Facing the threat of a world organized by relations that destroy life and generate exclusion, inequalities, and violence, we need to think about how to build a fair, global society rooted in both diversity and solidarity. From the standpoint of Brazil, an emerging global power, but threatened by a huge social divide, and from that of Amazonia, the planet’s lung, which the market in its blindness is seeking to possess and wipe out, this paper sets out a few proposals for change base on the (...) read more

Towards a Global Political-Economic Architecture of Environmental Space ¤ Ton Bührs ¤ November 2007The concept of environmental space (ES) has been put forward as a means of operationalising sustainability. Based on three tenets, the recognition of environmental limits, a strong equity principle, and a focus on resource consumption, the ES approach offers a cognitive framework for a comprehensive and integrated approach to environmental/resource policy and management. With growing concerns about mounting environmental pressures and looming ecological and resource scarcity, it offers also (...) read more

Negative Growth or Sustainable Development? ¤ Guillaume Duval ¤ 5 December 2004Extreme-climate instances are on the increase, waste is accumulating, groundwater is running out or is polluted, oil is going to become scarce, and controlling it is the cause of increasingly violent conflicts, whether in Iraq or in Chechnya. At the same time, the capacity of the current economic system to meet social needs is increasingly disputed.
Global inequalities are becoming deeper, and if part of Asia is coming out of underdevelopment, it is doing so by adopting a lifestyle that (...) read more

Managing Territories, Cities, and the Rural World

Rural Areas and World Governance ¤ Matthieu Calame ¤ 15 November 2010Rural areas include managed forested areas, farming areas, and settled areas. These areas offer a huge diversity of situations, from prosperous zones to those in decline, from sparsely populated areas, possibly on the point of being abandoned, to zones of high population density that are very active, with a network of towns and trade activities.
These areas share a common set of challenges that they all have to face:
– using farming, forestry and freshwater fish-farming to manage (...) read more

Videos on the Seminar "What Brazil and What Amazonia Does the World Need?" ¤ FnWG Team,
iBase,
Traversées ¤ 20 May 2010On May 8-9, 2008, the Seminar “What Brazil and What Amazonia Does the World Need?” was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was organized by IBASE and the FnWG and attracted some 30 actors from different fields around the region to discuss the question of governance in Amazonia.
The Amazon basin is the object of a constant struggle: on the one hand, there is a desire to exploit its natural resources and on the other, the need to preserve its biological and human diversity. Above all else, it (...) read more

Concepts

Global Governance ¤ Wikipedia ¤ 5 August 2009(Also available at wikicoredem) Global governance is the political interaction of transnational actors aimed at solving problems that affect more than one state or region when there is no power of enforcing compliance. The question of world governance arises in the context of what is known as globalization. In response to the acceleration of interdependences on a worldwide scale, both between human societies and between humankind and the biosphere, world governance designates regulations intended for the global (...) read more

The Architecture of World Governance

The UN: Which Reforms for What Future? ¤ Stéphanie Ah Tchou ¤ 20 January 2009The UN is currently under a lot of criticism. Upbraided and disparaged, the body that conveyed so much hope is now being berated. There is abundant literature on its subject, not to praise it but to point out its weaknesses, to the point of challenging its very existence.
How did this come to happen? Is such reproach warranted? How should the UN be reformed? What is its future? Should it really be abolished? This file contains info sheets organized according to a number of different (...) read more